Trap
by Yet Another Pseudonym
Summary: Why is it so hard to speak one's heart?  Are three little words so difficult to utter?  Two years after the heartbreak, the answer is, apparently, yes. Fenris/FemHawke


"If you're going to leave, just do it!"

She seized the book he'd been reading with her and let fly with it. The cover flapped once or twice like a dying bird and the pages fanned out before it hit the wall and flopped to the ground. The smack didn't seem to satisfy her any; she gritted her teeth and clenched her fists until her knuckles whitened.

"I asked you what you thought, though it seems the book has paid the price for my curiosity." She didn't bother to look at him, nor did she respond with the half-smile he expected.

"Forget it." She shrank away from him on the bench and stared into the flames.

The fire, though it could scarce be called such, sputtered and crackled as a chill breeze seeped through the cracks in the fireplace. She'd never had such eyes for the fire, though she apparently still had eyes for him, no matter how he'd wrecked his chances two years before. He gripped the bench's edge as her hair fell over her cheek and hid even the tip of her nose. He caught a hint of a deep breath, wetter than a sigh.

"Andra."

"There's no point in talking about it. You don't want to stay, so don't. Just leave. Just go. Isn't that what you always do?" There was no mistaking the hitching in her chest or the thickness in her voice.

"I've heard nothing from Danarius, Andra. No hunters, no apprentices, not the faintest sign for _years_. I can't…"

"Then go hunt him and shut up about it!"

"You don't understand."

"No, you're right, I don't, and I never will. I don't understand why you can't just _live_! Why you can't settle down and appreciate what you have. Why you have to keep running away from _everything_." Unspoken was the accusation he heard loud and clear, though she never would say it outright. _Why you have to keep running away from __**me**_.

"I thought I was free, Andra, but Danarius sent Hadriana after me. What happens when I've settled here too long?"

"And I thought that's why you were sticking around, so you'd have help if it ever did happen again. You know I'll…"

"And if he strikes after I've 'lived' too long in complacency, as he already has? What then?"

"I'm here. And there's a whole legion of lunatics looking out for you." She swallowed after choking the words out.

"And for how long, Andra? No one waits forever."

"However long you need me. I can't believe you'd even question that!"

She was on her feet in a flash, and when she whirled on him, the flames turned the rivers that ran down her cheeks to molten gold. Molten enough to melt even the most shriveled, ashen heart. He winced, but before he realized it, she warmed him as she once had two years ago. Only once, though if he'd had the courage… He found one hand gripping the small of her back, and the second entwined in silk as it cradled the back of her head. Though his palms screamed as if licked by flame, his heart beat again as her breasts gave slightly against his chest. He pulled himself closer until she rubbed every inch of him and set him ablaze. Her breath sent shocks down his spine as she buried her head in the crook of his neck. As he reveled in the silk that tickled his hand, she clutched at his waist with one supple arm, and slipped a finger along his ear.

_She lets her fingers wander everywhere, in his hair, along his jaw. She smiles as his lips pause against her cheek and traces the outline of his ear with one finger. 'Knife-ears!' Danarius sneers in the vision that supplants her and he shudders. She takes it as another of his roused tremblings and suckles on the tip. The shudder becomes shivering as he hears her pleasured gasp._

The breath became a rain of soft fluttering along his jaw, the fallen petals and drifting pollen of a Seheron jungle spring. He closed his eyes and let her lips drizzle as they would. The tickle grew and suffused every inch of his being until he vibrated with it. She trembled with him, and her breath quickened. He drew back and parted his lips as the need to wrestle her to the bed drove him mad. She stared at him, pure flame, from the cascade of her hair down her neck to the redness in her eyes. He read the same want there that threatened to consume him. _Here is the answer I seek_. He leaned in to taste her, to feel the surrender of her lush lips in his. She shivered and ripped her way out of his grasp.

"No! I can't do this. Not when you want to leave…"

"Andra, I…" But the words he'd wanted to utter stuck in his throat as steel bands closed on them and sunk their teeth into his gullet.

_I need to hunt him, Andra, _he'd said_. _But not the rest, not,_ "Come with me."_

She didn't look back as she ran. Would she have run if she'd heard the rest of what he'd wanted to say? He feared either answer. She rattled around in her mansion, and never seemed to find it home the way she had his own ruin. Kirkwall needed her. Her sister, who she still couldn't visit, needed her. The abomination needed her, the blood mage, the dwarf, all of them. The door's slamming echoed even back to the only room he used and rammed the trap's teeth deeper into his gut. He couldn't dare ask her to give up _home_ and the demands that snared her, nor could he fail to ask, even if he had each time he'd tried. A yes might free her, but it would poison him as he thought of all who might suffer if she left Kirkwall's cage behind, but a no… He couldn't imagine losing that smile or the laugh, or her sometimes cringe-worthy jokes. Or what small part of his soul that he'd found again through her. No matter how he wished to run, her own bonds held him just as tight, and he chafed in Kirkwall's grasp.

He ripped himself free of the bands that had wrapped themselves around his feet, the bands that kept him from running right after her. He reached for his sword—Aveline's guards were losing against the new wave of bandit assaults—and forced himself to follow. Maybe the other words would finally escape the trap of his cowardice. _I love you._


End file.
